American School of Dubai Awarded Zayed Sustainability Prize
EMPOWERING STUDENTS FOR CHANGE AND DEEPER LEARNING
By LAURENCE MYERS, K-12 Service Learning Coordinator, and
PRAXIA APOSTLE, Associate Director of Learning
American School of Dubai, UAE
ASD Eco-Schools Student Coordinators Aleena Abbasi and Yasmin Gulamhusein accepting the Zayed Sustainability Award in January 2019. Source: Sami Zaatari, Gulf News, Dubai.
On January 14, 2019, a delegation of American School of Dubai (ASD) students and teachers were proudly presented with the prestigious Zayed Sustainability Prize. One of only 11 global winners out of 2,101 applicants, we were delighted by the recognition — a tribute to our vision of being a model of sustainability.
The award validates our emphasis on three school-wide sustainability themes regarding student engagement in authentic learning:
- Students making positive contributions to their school and wider community
- Sustainability-based decisions revolving around the concept of cyclical relationships
- Sustainability being the focus of a larger conversation beyond ASD.
Exploring sustainability within the UAE has opened up new pathways for learning and action at a local level. The marriage of sustainability (the outcome) and service learning (the learning process) has been a powerful one at ASD, and one we aim to expand on!
We aimed to use Zayed Sustainability Prize money to generate an impact larger than ourselves, our students or even our community.
Numerous groups at ASD have played a significant role in the development of an ever-growing sustainability ethos on campus. Foremost is ASD’s Sustainability Committee. This committee works in conjunction with a number of student organizations such the HS Sustainability Action Team (developing strategic plans and best practices documents), Sustain Our World (organic food and planting-to-plate programs), Global Issues Network and Roots & Shoots (eliminating plastic waste).
This year we also began the Eco-Schools program whose student executives facilitate and implement sustainability-related decisions involving various stakeholders of our community. Each of these groups was critical in identifying the content of our Zayed Sustainability Award proposal.
ASD Eco-Schools Student Coordinators Aleena Abbasi, Yasmin Gulamhusein, and Service Learning Coordinator Laurence Myers. Source: Ahmed Ramzan, Gulf News, Dubai.
Given that our work is geared toward empowering our students to make positive change in their community and that sustainability-based programs revolve around the idea of cyclical relationships, we aimed to use Zayed Sustainability Prize money to generate an impact larger than ourselves, our students or even our community.
To that end we plan to:
- obtain an industrial composter to eliminate post-consumer food waste and landscaping waste that instead of being sent to landfill, can now be reused within our campus.
- establish a learning beehive on campus to support pollinators in the UAE, and to support the study of biodiversity, life cycles, and sustainable business, and,
- add a sustainable data dashboard with real-time data related to school energy, water, paper and waste to increase awareness and provide compelling data to engage students in deeper learning.
If we are to be the change we want to see in the world it’s important to allow our students to do that in a place and time that provides relevance and empowers them to make positive change now.
In support of UAE Vision 2021 we anticipate the composter will virtually eliminate post-consumer waste, in conjunction with the introduction of bioplastic packaging, from our cafeteria and events. The composter also addresses waste from landscaping headed to the landfill and provides us with a cyclical solution to our own needs for composting. Our learning beehive on campus will be the first in the region, and will support the study of pollinators in our Grade 2 classes.
We expect extensions into life science, earth sciences, biodiversity, and other powerful curricular connections. Future work may also include our business studies classes developing ASD honey and compost product lines. Sustainability has provided us with an authentic platform for our future to unfold.
If we are to be the change we want to see in the world it’s important to allow our students to do that in a place and time that provides relevance and empowers them to make positive change now. The change makers of tomorrow are developed today. In fact, they are creating the future they want to see each and every day.
lmyers@asdubai.org, papostle@asdubai.org (As of the Fall: papostle@iskl.edu.my)
Read more about this story in the Gulf News.
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